College classes began 10 weeks earlier. And they just finished this afternoon at 4:30, when the sun was just dipping below the mountains.

Behold, the trimester system. Three per academic year, each ten weeks long. Final examinations take place this weekend, where all hell will break loose, and then I'll be on the plane back to Hong Kong when I've just gotten settled here at Carleton College, Northfield Minnesota.

Feels like I've gone quite a long way. Certainly this academic term has been extremely intense, and as always with time I never saw or noticed it slip by so quickly. Before I knew it Daylight Savings came into play about three weeks earlier, and it was getting darker outside by mid-afternoon, and I started eating dinner at a much sooner time. Grades are very much a concern - very much a priority, but at the same time very much a consuming notion. It's college.

Home soon. But I've very much made myself quite at home here at college, and it will be another six weeks before I return and see my close floormates, my newly made friends and acquaintances, and the college environment. It's that moment when you realize you'll feel quite strange sleeping alone in your own bedroom back at home because you've been so used to having a roommate for the previous three months.

The beloved trimester. Love it or hate it.